People on the Move

Byrne-Jones Appointed Director, Casualty Specialty Risks for Crawford & Company

Crawford & Company appointed Rowena Byrne-Jones as a director of Casualty Specialist Risks. Byrne-Jones is regularly involved in multi-million pound losses involving multiple claimants, often in the glare of media attention and has a strong reputation in the market.

She reports to John Buckle, liability managing director for the UK, and will work closely with experts in Crawford’s recently launched European financial lines claims service.

The Crawford European financial lines service includes highly skilled lawyers, accountants and engineers with expertise that has been built up over many years. The financial lines service offers extensive experience in multi-insurer, multi-layer, reinsured and captive-led covers across the UK and Europe. Claims of any size or complexity are handled by this recently launched service.

Verisk Appoints Churney President, AIR Worldwide

Verisk Analytics, a data analytics provider, announced that the appointment of Bill Churney to the position of president of its AIR Worldwide business. Former AIR President Ming Lee retired effective January 1, 2016. He will continue at AIR until June 2016 in a non-executive role.

Churney will have immediate responsibility for setting global strategy and overseeing worldwide operations at AIR.

Churney joined AIR in 2002 and most recently served as chief operating officer. In that role, he was responsible for overseeing strategic direction and company operations for product management, software product development, global business development, marketing, consulting, and client service activities. He has extensive experience working directly with companies to better understand their catastrophe risk management processes and to identify ways to implement analytics to improve risk management.

Before joining AIR, Churney worked in product management and operations management.

JLT Specialty USA Appoints Robert Robideaux as Executive Vice President

JLT Specialty USA, a U.S. subsidiary of Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group plc., a global specialty provider of insurer, reinsurance and employee benefits related advice, brokerage and associated services, announced the appointment of Robert Robideaux as the executive vice president and regional head of Client Development, focusing on private equity and alternative investment funds.

Robideaux joins as a member of JLT’s Private Equity Executive Committee. His responsibilities will include client development, recruitment and management of a team focused on delivering JLT’s specialty risk solutions to the alternative investment community.

With over two decades of experience in the risk and insurance industry, Robideaux comes to JLT following his role at Marsh as managing director of the Global Private Equity and Mergers & Acquisitions Practice. Previously, Robideaux managed AIG’s West Coast Mergers & Acquisitions Insurance Group, where he developed transactional insurance and financial products. He also practiced as a lawyer and tax advisor with Deloitte and KPMG.

Spreemo Names New Leader of its Healthcare Analytics Team

Daniel Elgort, Ph.D., has been named vice president of Healthcare Analytics at Spreemo, a healthcare platform that provides evidence-based metrics and predictive analytics to facilitate high-quality and collaborative patient care.

Most recently, he served as director and global lead of Healthcare Big Data Analytics Research at Philips. In his new role, Dr. Elgort will oversee the continued expansion of Spreemo’s data analytics initiatives in radiology, as well as other medical disciplines.

Dr. Elgort has conducted extensive healthcare research and is the primary author of over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and conference abstracts. He holds over 40 pending or granted patents and was the recipient of Phase I and II DARPA grants. He has a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Case Western Reserve University.

Nationwide Names Clark New President of Excess and Surplus lines Business

Nationwide announced today that Tom Clark has been elected president of Nationwide’s Excess & Surplus lines business. In a planned leadership transition the company announced in 2014, Clark succeeds Mike Miller, who remains with Nationwide.

Prior to joining the Excess & Surplus team as executive vice president in 2014, Clark served as senior vice president for Allied Field Operations. In addition, Clark led field operations for Harleysville Insurance and played a key role in the integration of Harleysville into the Nationwide family. He has more than 25 years of technical and leadership experience in the insurance industry.

Miller is now president of Nationwide Ventures. In his new role, Miller will work to successfully source, execute and manage strategic investments for the company.